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We had a simple goal when we built the first version of DC Metrics: give warehouse managers a clear, honest view of what was actually happening on their floor.
No more relying on spreadsheets cobbled together at the end of the week.
No more guessing where the time went.
Just a closed-loop view of every minute, every pick, every pallet.
Several years on, the product has grown up alongside the warehouses using it. Our customers have grown bigger. Their operations have grown more complex. And the questions they’re asking the data have grown sharper. Version 5 is our answer to all of that.
Here’s what’s coming, and why it matters.
Built to scale with bigger operations
As DC Metrics has moved into larger sites with thousands of users rather than dozens, we’ve put serious work into how the system handles that volume.
“The queries were a bit slower when we’re going into large scale,” Aniket Pramanik, our Application Programmer, explains. “It’s fine for 50 people. But when you’re calculating that for thousands of people, then it will take some time.”
V5 optimises the engine that crunches all that data, so reports that used to slow down at scale now run cleanly across enterprise-sized workforces. As James Gardiner, Principal at WIN Solutions, puts it: “As our user base grows, we’re scaling the product to the larger clients. We’re optimising the application as we grow into clients now with hundreds of users.”
A stronger relationship with AWS
DC Metrics is hosted on AWS, and our work with the platform has gone from strength to strength. For clients, that translates into the kind of security, uptime, and reliability you’d expect from one of the world’s most trusted cloud providers — without having to manage any of it yourself.
It also means we can spin up new environments faster, deploy updates with less friction, and give clients more flexibility in how the system fits their existing IT setup.
Container unloading: visibility from the dock door in
If you’ve ever tried to work out where the bottleneck really is in your inbound process, you’ll know the data tends to dry up before the goods even hit the rack. V5 changes that with a refined container unloading capability.
“What we can now do is track the unloading of your shipping containers,” James says. “From the point of purchase order and ASN all the way through to palletised on your dock and in your warehouse, we can track the labour that does that for you.”
That’s a significant gap closed. For 3PLs and importers especially, knowing the true cost of getting a container off the truck and into the system is critical for accurate billing, fair customer rates, and identifying where time is genuinely being lost.
A fresh interface, role-based dashboards, and smarter notifications
V5 brings a complete UI overhaul. The look and feel has been modernised, but more importantly, dashboards are now role-based. A team leader sees what they need to see, a supervisor sees their view, and senior management gets the high-level overview, all from the same system.
Approval workflows have been built into the product, automated alerts have been expanded, and notification logic is sharper. Less time hunting for what matters. More time acting on it.
Growing our payroll integrations
DC Metrics has always been more than a productivity tool. It’s a way of understanding the true cost of labour, right down to the unit. To make that easier to act on, we’ve been steadily building out our integrations with the payroll platforms our clients actually use.
“We continue to grow or strengthen our integrations with the payroll providers here in Australia,” James notes. We’ve completed integration with Deputy, are currently working with Dayforce, and Elmo is next on the list.
It’s worth being honest about how this works: every payroll platform has dozens of versions in the wild, and each client’s setup is slightly different. So rather than a one-click plug-and-play, what we offer is a growing set of APIs and proven experience getting these integrations live across different client environments. The result is that DC Metrics calculates what each worker has earned based on real, measured output, then hands that information to the payroll system that pays them — closing the loop between what people did and what they’re paid for it.
One platform, many warehouses
V5 is also the first version built around a single, centralised codebase. Every client runs the same core product, with customisations layered on top where needed.
That might sound like a technical detail, but the practical impact is significant. Updates roll out faster. Improvements made for one client can be made available to all. And clients benefit from a product that’s continually being sharpened by the collective experience of every warehouse using it.
What’s next
Beyond V5, we’re already mapping out the next chapter. Workforce rostering is firmly on the development roadmap, using the same productivity and performance data DC Metrics already collects to help managers build smarter rosters. If you know which staff hit which numbers on which days, why wouldn’t you use that to plan ahead?
More on that as it develops.
Coming together at the User Group Conference
V5 will be the centrepiece of our upcoming User Group Conference in July. It’s a chance for current DC Metrics customers to walk through the new release with the team, ask the hard questions, and share what’s working (and what isn’t) on their own sites. Dates will be confirmed shortly. Keep an eye out.
The thread running through all of it
Every update in V5 comes back to the same idea we started with. The scaling work, the AWS hosting, the container tracking, the payroll integrations, the centralised platform; it all serves a purpose. If you can’t measure it, you can’t manage it. We’re just measuring more, more accurately, and making it easier to act on.
If you’d like to see what V5 could do in your warehouse, we’d love to chat. Get in touch with the team and we’ll walk you through it.
